Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada mentioned he’ll resign days after Christa Pike was hospitalized within the wake of a botched execution try, in accordance with Gov. Invoice Lee.
The Tennessee governor’s assertion on Saturday didn’t straight reference the state of affairs with Pike, who’s at the moment “critically ill,” unconscious and on a ventilator in a hospital following the Sept. 30 failed execution. Within the announcement, Strada mentioned that stepping apart was “in one of the best curiosity of Tennesseans because the unbiased assessment strikes ahead.”
Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada speaks to the media, Dec. 11, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV/AP Picture
“I imagine this assessment is fully acceptable and crucial, and I look ahead to doing every part I can to assist decide precisely what occurred,” he mentioned in an announcement.
Lee mentioned he accepted Strada’s resignation and the commissioner would go away his put up on the finish of the month.
“Commissioner Strada has served with integrity, and I respect his willingness to place the pursuits of Tennesseans first throughout this tough second,” the governor mentioned in an announcement.
An interim commissioner can be introduced at a later date, the assertion famous.
Pike’s attorneys, Randy Spivey, Kelly Gleason, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen, responded to the Strada stepping down in their very own assertion.
“The resignation of Commissioner Strada is justified, however it does nothing to assist Christa now. What occurred to her Wednesday displays a systemic failure that goes far past anybody particular person,” they wrote. “We hope the Governor’s name for a full, unbiased assessment will expose the profound issues inside Tennessee’s total loss of life penalty system.”
Undated picture of Christa Pike supplied by the Tennessee Division of Correction.
Tennessee Division of Correcti by way of AP
Strada’s resignation comes after questions arose about his record as a correction official and different botched executions.
Strada started serving because the Deputy Director for the Arizona Division of Correction in January 2020 after serving because the director of operations for personal jail operator The Geo Group, in accordance with his LinkedIn web page.
Throughout his tenure in Arizona, he oversaw prisons the place advocates say three executions had been botched.
Based on the Loss of life Penalty Data Heart, every of the three executions Arizona carried out in 2022 was “visibly problematic.”
These three executions had been the state’s first since 2014, when the deadly injection of Joseph Wooden took practically two hours and resulted in him visibly struggling to breathe.
Tennessee Division of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada speaks at Riverbend Most Safety Establishment after the execution of Anthony Darrell Hines, Aug. 13, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.
Mark Humphrey/AP Picture
After the three executions in 2022 went mistaken, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an govt order directing an unbiased assessment of the state’s execution coverage and paused deadly injections within the state.
A couple of month earlier than Hobbs signed her govt order, Tennessee’s Gov. Lee introduced that Strada would take over the state’s Division of Correction.
On the time of his appointment, Tennessee too had paused executions after a 2022 incident when a deadly injection was halted on the final minute as a result of officers did not correctly check the medicine.
By December 2024 — below Strada’s management — the Tennessee Division of Correction issued new protocols to renew deadly injections within the state.
Pike’s attorneys mentioned Friday that she is within the hospital on a ventilator and being “handled for the intense results of the pentobarbital administered in the course of the execution try, together with important accidents to each arms.”
Loss of life row inmate Christa Pike enters a Knox County Prison Courtroom in Knoxville, Tennessee, December 4, 2007.
J. Miles Cary/USA Immediately Community by way of Reuters
The attorneys filed an emergency movement Friday in Davidson County Chancery Courtroom searching for an order requiring the Tennessee Division of Correction to protect all related proof associated to the execution try.
Based on the movement, Pike “may very well be heard crying, whimpering, and respiration loudly” whereas being administered two deadly doses of pentobarbital, at one level stating that her arm “feels prefer it’s about to burst open.” At the very least seven needles had been used to achieve IV entry, with one “bent in a 90-degree angle when it was eliminated,” it acknowledged.
The movement described pentobarbital, a sedating treatment, as being “caustic and extremely alkaline” and that it “burns upon contact.” Each of Pike’s arms had been “swollen, burned, and blistered” when she arrived at a Nashville-area hospital, the movement acknowledged.
“Hospital employees are working to save lots of Ms. Pike’s life and to clear the pentobarbital from her system,” the movement acknowledged.
Pike, the primary girl the state deliberate to execute in over 200 years, had raised considerations a couple of deadly injection within the months previous to her scheduled execution, arguing that her “thrombocytosis, put up traumatic stress dysfunction and small veins ‘make it certain or very possible that there’s a substantial threat that she’s going to expertise pointless and superadded ache and struggling, terror, and shame,'” the movement acknowledged.
Emergency autos arrive at Riverbend Most Safety Establishment after the execution of Christa Pike was halted, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn.
George Walker IV/AP Picture
Pike is the primary particular person reported to have survived deadly injection after being given medicines, in accordance with the Loss of life Penalty Data Heart, whose govt director referred to the failed try as “the worst we have ever seen and in contrast to every other botched execution within the trendy period.”
The governor has ordered a “third-party assessment” and a short lived halt to scheduled executions after the execution try.
“As far as we all know, the Division of Correction adopted precisely the protocol as outlined,” the governor instructed reporters on Thursday. He mentioned the state must know “why the result is totally different this time than ever earlier than.”
ABC Information’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
